O’Loan thanks voters

By Times Reporter

Declan O’Loan said “I want to thank the 2925 people who came out to vote for the SDLP across North Antrim. We retained the share of the nationalist vote that we held in the 2011 Assembly election. Nonetheless there was some drop in the actual votes received and more work needs to be done to strengthen the vital voice of the SDLP.”

“There is now a new political picture across the UK, the key outcomes being a majority Conservative government which doesn’t need DUP support, and the dramatic success of the SNP in Scotland. There will be change to the devolution settlement for Scotland and knock-on changes for Northern Ireland. This must not turn into a simplistic demand for more money. What we need is not more money, it is more agreement at Stormont on what we do with our money. As ever, we come back to the partnership principles held by the SDLP, and the fact that other parties take their places but do not attempt to achieve consensus in the same way. The people lose out because of that.”